Rural Water Supply for Fire Supression Is an Art Form

There’s a saying that providing rural water for fire suppression is the art of knowing how to get water from a rock. It often can feel like that, but when a firefighter does find a water source, getting it to the fire scene is as important as accessing it in the first place.

Tankers and portable tanks are essential components of most rural water operations. Tankers, also known as tenders depending on geographic location, obviously transport water from the source to the scene and portable tanks provide temporary storage areas for the water hauled to the fire.

Dominic Colletti, a veteran firefighter with decades of rural firefighting under his belt, is the author of the second edition of The Rural Firefighting Handbook, published in 2012. He shared some tips on how best to provide a sustained water supply in rural settings using tankers and portable tanks.

Portable tanks are carried on apparatus, often on the tankers, sometimes on engines. But in either case, accessibility needs to be considered.

Selecting the proper portable tank

Colletti said whenever a fire department designs a new apparatus with a portable tank, it needs to consider how it will be deployed when needed, especially in a hurry at a fire scene.

“You need to think of it from an ergonomic standpoint,” Colletti said. “You may want to consider a power-operated lift to save neck and back strain. That’s all part of apparatus planning. You should consider how many people are going to be needed to deploy it and how many people you have.”

Size is also a consideration, Colletti added. He recommends the biggest that can be feasibly carried and deployed should be specified.

“The portable tank is an important part of the water-delivery process,” Colletti said. “You should consider how much that tank needs to hold. More is better because it acts like a surge tank. It’s a temporary spot for water as it is being put in and pumped out.”

Rural water operations are not a routine action. In fact, they happen very infrequently. That’s why most fire departments want their portable tanks to last a long time.

“There are really a couple of issues,” Colletti said. “Basically, you have to consider the robustness of the tank, the quality of the tank. That’s one issue. In most rural departments, they are going to be expected to be around for a long time. Another consideration is, because they’re around for a long time, you should expect to have an issue with them at one time or another. Repairs need to be made quickly with a quick turn around.”

Once the portable tanks have been specified, ordered and placed on the apparatus, hopefully in the most convenient and accessible place possible, firefighters will have to know how to deploy them.

Colletti said some rural water operations are long duration events that require multiple portable tanks.

“We need to know how to set them up easily,” he said, adding that thinking and training ahead of time will help position suction hose, strainers and related equipment on the apparatus for maximum efficiency.

“Can I do it myself?” Colletti offered as a question firefighters and engine operators need to consider. “Have I made everything as easy as possible? Is my suction hose in an easy spot to get to? If not, how many people do I need to get everything set up?”

Colletti said drafting equipment often needs maintenance to make sure strainer swivels are free of sand and work as designed. Malfunctions are to be expected, that’s why the preventative maintenance will pay off ahead of time and reduce the set-up time when it’s the most critical.

There are times when more than one portable tank should be used to facilitate the “water on wheels” shuttle operations. That needs to be considered when the first tank is placed to make sure additional tanks can be accommodated. Colletti said he often deploys portable tanks in diamond patterns to make it easier for tankers to access and also to gain access to compartment space on the supply engine actually moving water in the portable tanks.

When multiple tanks are set up, Colletti said fire departments need to make sure they have everything, like jet siphons and similar equipment, ready to go. Part of that equipment should include durable numbered cards to identify each of the tanks so apparatus in the shuttle operation can be directed to the tank into which they should discharge water.

“Anything you can do to compress the off-load time, the better it is,” Colletti said.

Colletti said 80 percent of most rural water-supply scenarios rely on human factors. Consequently, he recommends frequent practice to make these operations most efficient.

During training, Colletti said he will just give the order to set up a rural water-supply operation with tanks and equipment and then sit back and watch to see how the firefighters execute the order.

“Usually within 10 minutes there’s 10 ideas that will make the operation a lot faster and more efficient,” he said, noting that some of those include pre-connecting suction hose and strainers and even just moving certain pieces of equipment to make them more accessible when needed.

Colletti said, depending on how much water the fire suppression efforts need, it’s probably a good idea to go straight to the left or right steamer intake to reduce the friction loss when drafting out of portable tanks.

“You are always looking to compress the time cycle,” he said. “It’s something that you may only do once a year, if that, in many rural communities. That’s why training is important.”

Tanker designs can also affect the water delivery process, he said. When designing an apparatus used to shuttle water, fire departments should carefully look at off-load times and design the rigs with maximum efficiencies in mind.

“There are a whole bunch of thoughts out there today,” Colletti said. “One of them is having the chute exit from the bottom of the tank.”

Some apparatus have power-operated chutes and valves on side-mounted dump valves, which allow apparatus to slide up alongside a portable tank and just discharge the water, he said.

Whatever system that’s used, there are operational practices that must be considered. For instance, some tankers very quickly discharge 95 percent of their load, but might take 10 or 15 minutes for the remaining 5 percent to be discharged. Too often, Colletti said firefighters make the mistake of trying to get every last drop out of their tanks before moving on to refill.

“The object is to reduce the cycle time,” Colletti said, noting that it ultimately may be more efficient to leave a bit on the apparatus and get more.

He very strongly points out that driving fast on the shuttle route does not save time and is perilously dangerous.

“Excessive speed on the roadway is very ill advised,” Colletti said.

The way to save time in a shuttle is to reduce dumping and filling times. At the fill site, the best way to save time and work efficiently is to have the refilling engine deploy multiple direct fill lines established to fill more than one unit at a time, or use two lines into one tanker, if possible, Colletti said. In all cases, firefighters should never exceed manufacturers’ labels for refilling pressures, he said, noting there is a real danger of causing significant damage to the tank and personal injury if equipment fails or is used improperly.

Colletti said having safety officers at fill and dump sites is a good idea because in most shuttle scenarios, everyone is rushing and in a hurry to get water to the fire site as quickly as possible, sometimes throwing caution to the wind.

He also took a moment to offer some advice about tankers. While his information is anecdotal, he said there’s a too high of a percent of water-hauling vehicles on the road that don’t have anti-lock brakes and other modern features like roll stability and other amenities that most drivers have on their cars.

“Most parents would never let their sons or daughters drive vehicles without anti-lock brakes and airbags,” he said. “Yet the irony of the fire service is that, I bet about 50 percent of tankers don’t have those features. It could be more, it could be less, but the point is there are too many of them out there without those features.”

He said police officers are no longer using 40-year-old cruisers, yet the fire service still has units in service that are that old or older.

“The best way to run a rural water-supply operation is with efficiently designed tankers, reducing set up times, fill and unloading times and by working efficiently and safely,” Colletti said. “The more we continue to improve, the more we will reduce delivery time and reduce injuries.”

To get in touch with Colletti or to find out more about his book, write to [email protected].